Freedom's Choice

Freedom's Choice

A group of slaves, brought to an uninhabited planet by their Catenni masters, who have taken over Earth, must learn to survive in their new surroundings, but some struggle with calling their new planet home and consider a rebellion in order to return to their true home. YA?In what may be her best series since the early "Pern" novels, McCaffrey has created yet another winner. While conquering and colonizing the universe, the alien Catteni take the misfits and troublemakers they encounter and dump them on empty planets. If they survive, then the Catteni move in. Freedom's Landing (Putnam, 1995) introduced a human/alien group struggling just to stay alive. In this second book, these Botany Bay-like survivors have overcome hardships to establish a society of sorts. Zainal, a renegade Catteni, and his fellow dumpees have begun to strike back at their oppressors. They are also trying to uncover the identity of the original residents of the planet and enlist their support. McCaffrey has developed another exotic world peopled with interesting, well-developed characters. This book stands alone but works better with the first novel. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Continuing the storyline from Freedom's Landing (LJ 4/15/95), this second book in the series finds the human and aliens on the penal planet Botany planning a rebellion against their slavemasters. After the Catteni subdue and transport to penal colony planets people from Earth and other civilizations for their Eosi masters, one Catteni, Zainal, chooses to remain on Botany. His plan? To join his fellow slaves in convincing the absentee owners of the planet to turn against the Eosi and free the colonists. McCaffrey is at her best with interspecies interactions and uniting for a goal against a common enemy. Highly recommended for sf collections. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. The adventure continues in this immediate sequel to McCaffrey's Freedom's Landing (1995), in which a variety of races, alien and human, were dumped on a remote planet, which they dubbed Freedom, by the alien Catteni, who, attempting to conquer the universe, are ridding sundry planets of resisters among their native inhabitants. As the recalcitrant resettled persevere in their efforts to survive, they learn more about the mysterious, advanced society that, in absentia, is mechanically farming the planet, and they manage to get a message off to it in the hope that it will help them battle the Catteni and their overseers. Stay and create a new society on Freedom, where many of the colonists have begun to feel at home, or return to Earth to rejoin the opposition to the Catteni? That question divides the colony, particularly as it manages to make inroads in its struggles against the Catteni. McCaffrey compellingly limns the interrelationships among the settlers, their efforts to become a cohesive group, and their concerted and successful attempts to outwit their captors. All in all, this episode of the Freedom saga is as exciting and convincing as the first. It will leave readers gladly anticipating the next. Sally Estes Sequel to Freedom's Landing (1995), chunk two of McCaffrey's latest interstellar saga. Following the invasion of Earth by humanoid alien Catteni, a group of human survivors and rebels- -including Earth girl Kris Bjornsen and her aristocratic, renegade Catteni lover, Zainal--has been dumped on planet Botany, a farm world run by machines. The parasitic Eosi rule the Catteni as overlords by commandeering suitable Catteni bodies, though so far Zainal has avoided his own nemesis, the Ix Mentat. Kris, Zainal, and the colony's military bigwigs capture several Catteni spacecraft before Botany's absentee landlords, the Farmers, show up. Highly advanced, telepathic shapeshifters, the Farmers deplore interspecies conflict but decline to intervene; they do, however, screen Botany from Catteni spacecraft. Zainal leads a raid on planet Barevi to pick up goods looted from Earth, and learns that the Ix Mentat, infuriated by the Farmers' effortless superiority in denying the Catteni access to Botany, has used brain-burning mind probes on captured humans in the vain hope of discovering useful new technologies. McCaffrey helpfully recaps the previous book's events; overall, series fans will be delighted, although they'll know how this one ends: It doesn't. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Anne McCaffrey is the author of Freedom's Landing , Freedom's Choice , and Freedom's Challenge . In 1999 she received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, given by the American Library Association, for lifetime achievement. One of science fiction's most beloved writers, Anne lives in Ireland.